At the heart of every story lies a dilemma from which all tensions and conflicts arise. How do you identify the dilemma in your story? There are two ingredients: A powerful desire A false …
Story Structure
The End of the Story Informs the Beginning
In Steven Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he states: “Begin with the end in mind.” For first-time writers, this is helpful advice. But let’s clarify. When we talk about “the …
Writing Act Three: Our Hero Accepts the Reality of Their Situation
It can be frightening and exhilarating to realize that our story is bigger than we are, that in fact, it does not “belong” to us, that we are simply a channel. In Act Three of our story, our …
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Story Structure as an Experiential Model
There is a structure to the universe. From the smallest atom to the forces that move the planets, there is a universal law. We live in a state of surrendered acceptance to it (whether consciously or …
Story Structure
Story structure is often taught by story analysts as plot, but it is really the DNA of our protagonist’s internal journey to transformation.Without a sense of a beginning, middle and ending, you are …
The Lens Through Which You See Your Story
“I find that when I am working I become like an antenna, and suddenly everything relates to my screenplay: a mentioned recipe, a joke somebody tells, a billboard that I see. It all becomes grist for …
No Dilemma, No Story
One thing that has been coming up a lot in my classes is the tendency for writers to “figure out” their plot. This is due, at least in part, to story structure being taught by story analysts as a …
Dilemma: The Source of Your Story
At the heart of every story lies a dilemma. It is not a question of whether or not your protagonist has a dilemma, but rather, how effectively it has been explored. By exploring your protagonist’s …
Choice
Why do we write? Why do we spend months, years, even decades engaged in the solitary act of creating a world on paper with no assurance than anyone will read it, except perhaps our immediate family, …
Reframing Your Protagonist’s Goal
“Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by …
Most popular posts
Dilemma: The Source of Your Story
At the heart of every story lies a dilemma. It is not a question of whether or not your protagonist has a dilemma, but rather, how effectively it has been explored. By exploring your protagonist’s dilemma, you are led to the most dynamic version of your story. The dilemma is your story’s source, from which …
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Plot versus Theme
Any writer can experience that moment where you suddenly realize that your “idea” of the story isn’t going to get you to the end. Maybe you had a plan, but now the characters have changed in one way or another, and the end doesn’t make sense any more. You feel devastated! But, this can actually …
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The Imperative for Dramatic Conflict
A director told me once that if you put two actors together in a scene without directing them or staging the scene, the conflict would begin to diminish. If the actors were on opposite sides of the stage, they would gradually drift toward each other. Their voices would begin to match each other in tone …
Read MoreStory Day Workshop
This workshop is for novelists, screenwriters, show runners, memoirists, producers, directors, song writers, poets, editors, and anyone else with a desire to deepen their understanding of how to build a story.
Recent Posts
Story: A Journey of Self-Discovery
Story is always a journey of self-discovery “The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates Embarking on a creative endeavor, especially memoir writing, often brings forth a whirlwind of fears. Among these, the fear of exposure can loom large. When recounting personal experiences, the instinct to withhold information or downplay the drama — either …
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Exploring the Dilemma
At the heart of every story lies a dilemma. It is not a question of whether or not your protagonist has a dilemma, but rather, how effectively you’ve explored it. By exploring your protagonist’s dilemma, you are led to the most dynamic version of your story. Your protagonist’s dilemma is the source of your story, …
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Transformation
A fundamental understanding of transformation is crucial to having anything more than an intellectual relationship to structure. You’ve probably read books on three-act-structure. But it is important to recognize that no one has yet been able to isolate the transcendent beauty that draws us into a great story. It is one thing to analyze the …
Read More The Imperative for Dramatic Conflict
A director told me once that if you put two actors together in a scene without directing them or staging the scene, the conflict would begin to diminish. If the actors were on opposite sides of the stage, they would gradually drift toward each other. Their voices would begin to match each other in tone …
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Finding Home
“Home is where one starts from.” – T. S. Eliot There’s nothing more primal than our quest for home. The dilemma is that our childhood homes may have been confusing, chaotic, or even violent. Whatever your experience, in our adult lives we often unconsciously attempt to recreate it in order to resolve it. In her …
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Story is an Argument
(Image from “Big” 1988) Story is an argument. The theme (or dramatic question) is the thesis statement, and the story is the argument played out. Any argument requires opposing forces. These forces manifest as our antagonists. Antagonists are any characters that stand in the way of your protagonist getting what they want. Antagonists are not …
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What Does it Mean?
Everyone has a story. It takes courage to tell it, be it memoir or fiction, because there comes a point where we must separate the facts from the truth. The challenge for the storyteller lies in distilling events to their essential meaning. When we scratch the surface of our story and begin to ask “why” …
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Exploring Your Protagonist’s Dilemma
(Image from The Hunger Games, 2012) “The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.” – George Bernard Shaw Every story is essentially an argument that relates directly to the protagonist’s dilemma. Remember that a dilemma is a combination of a …
Read More Plot versus Theme
Any writer can experience that moment where you suddenly realize that your “idea” of the story isn’t going to get you to the end. Maybe you had a plan, but now the characters have changed in one way or another, and the end doesn’t make sense any more. You feel devastated! But, this can actually …
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The Nature of the “Want”
“To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.” – Isaac Newton While exploring the nature of the “want” in your story, it’s important to understand that you are an artist and you cannot make a mistake in this creative process. Everything you write either belongs, or is leading you to what ultimately belongs …
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